Critical Youth Participatory Action Research to Reimagine Environmental Education with Youth in Urban Environments

This work addresses ways to actively engage youth, particularly those growing up in urban contexts, in the rapidly expanding field of urban environmental education (EE). By inviting youth into the urban EE discourse, this study created opportunities to redefine what EE could look like when it is built on relevance to youth daily lives and is locally situated in urban settings. A critical urban environmental pedagogy, as conceptualized in this dissertation, brings together critical pedagogy and youth participatory action research to investigate the diversity of urban neighborhoods by youth who live there. These investigations reveal neoliberal urbanization processes and their resulting environmental injustices while creating space for youth to reimagine a more democratic process by which these socio-environmental conditions are made and (re)produced. This study explores how a critical urban environmental pedagogy was enacted and evolved in an urban environmental science classroom over the course of three years. Student perceptions of their environments, their connection to learning, and their emergence as critically conscious citizens are explored. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I introduce the overall context of the study including overarching theoretical and conceptual frameworks that organize the study. Chapters two and three introduce youth participatory action research (PAR) including the ways in which PAR methodologies, primarily photovoice and narratives, were enacted and evolved during the course of the study. The fourth chapter takes a macro view of the ways in which youth interact with their environments by looking closely at one year of photovoice data to describe youth’s experiences of growing up in their various urban environments. Chapter five zooms in on four students and follows their unique journey through the course. This chapter brings the voices of youth to the forefront, where each case study is deeply voiced by the youth, using multiple texts produced throughout the second year of the course. Chapter six discusses how incorporating a political ecology lens into a critical urban environmental pedagogy creates opportunities to problematize the impact of neoliberalism on urban EE and youth as well as reconceptualize nature for urban environments. This chapter highlights three pedagogical factors that emerged from working with youth in a critical classroom as well as the affordances, challenges, and tensions that arose. Chapter seven introduces a participatory analysis methodology, “the Data Carnival”, in which participants from all three years of the study collectively looked across multiple data sources from multiple years. This analysis allowed all participants to explore the ways the three years of data all hang together, as well as explore the epistemological, ontological, and axiological shifts that occurred in the classroom. The final chapter (Chapter eight) presents pedagogical reflections on the research as it pertains to both the larger conceptualization of a critical urban environmental pedagogy and the intersection of neoliberalism and EE. This chapter reimagines an EE that challenges neoliberal ideologies through the enactment of pedagogy that utilizes participatory research methodologies in conjunction with critical and social theory with the explicit goal of facilitating opportunities for the emergence of critical consciousness. This final chapter also discusses the implications this study has for educators, particularly environmental and teacher educators who are responsible for either reproducing or transforming EE. In reimagining EE as a process of continued exploration and understanding of ones local and lived community, we can better understand how to engage youth in processes of defining and investigating their socio-environmental contexts

Efficacy of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) on impulsive behaviours and aggressiveness in psychiatric disorders

It is the focus of increasing interest to investigate the effects of long-chain n-3 and long-chain n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC n-3 PUFAs; LC n-6 PUFAs) on psychiatric symptoms in a transdiagnostic perspective. There is some evidence that low levels of LC n-3 PUFAs and a higher ratio of LC n-6 to LC n-3 PUFAs in plasma and blood cells are associated with aggressive and impulsive behaviours. Therefore, implementation of LC n-3 PUFAs may produce positive effects on hostility, aggression, and impulsivity in both psychiatric and non-psychiatric samples across different stages of life. A possible mechanism of action of LC n-3 PUFAs in conditions characterized by a high level of impulsivity and aggression is due to the effect of these compounds on the serotonin system and membrane stability. Studies that evaluated the effects of LC n-3 PUFAs on impulsivity and aggressiveness indicated that addition of rather low doses of these agents to antipsychotic treatment might reduce agitation and violent behaviours in psychosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, personality disorders, and impulsive control and conduct disorders. The present review is aimed at examining and discussing available data from recent trials on this topic

Does the application of directive 2001/93/EC improve pigs welfare and productive performances?

Recently, with the aim to protect swine and enhance their welfare, a set of international rules has been approved by the European Commission (directive 91/630/CEE; 2001/88 CEE; 2001/93/CEE). These ..

A time-varying inertia pendulum: Analytical modelling and experimental identification

In this paper two of the main sources of non-stationary dynamics, namely the time-variability and the presence of nonlinearity, are analysed through the analytical and experimental study of a time-varying inertia pendulum. The pendulum undergoes large swinging amplitudes, so that its equation of motion is definitely nonlinear, and hence becomes a nonlinear time-varying system. The analysis is carried out through two subspace-based techniques for the identification of both the linear time-varying system and the nonlinear system. The flexural and the nonlinear swinging motions of the pendulum are uncoupled and are considered separately: for each of them an analytical model is built for comparisons and the identification procedures are developed. The results demonstrate that a good agreement between the predicted and the identified frequencies can be achieved, for both the considered motions. In particular, the estimates of the swinging frequency are very accurate for the entire domain of possible configurations, in terms of swinging amplitude and mass positio

Reimaging Environmental Education: Urban youths' perceptions and investigations of their communities

In this study we investigate ways that students in an environmental science course connect learning in their communities using photovoice. As a participatory methodology, photovoice provides a means for young people to critically explore issues that impact their everyday environments. Students utilized photovoice and narratives to uncover common themes experienced by young people in their rapidly changing urban neighborhoods. We found that through a photovoice project that incorporated a critical pedagogy of place framework, students were able to critically evaluate the physical spaces that construct their identities while documenting larger global issues that are happening on a local scale including segregation, gentrification, and differential access to spaces and resources. A critical place based pedagogy can challenge dominant ideologies about environmental education by highlighting social justice issues that are happening close to home and most salient to student’s lives

Pharmacological treatment for social cognition: Current evidence

Cognitive impairment is currently considered a core feature of schizophrenia (SZ) and is gaining attention as a fundamental therapeutic target. Standard treatment for SZ involves the use of antipsychotics that are successfully used to control positive symptoms and disorganized behaviour. However, it is still unclear whether they are effective on social cognition (SC) impairment. Furthermore, different medications are currently being studied to improve SC in patients with SZ. A literature search on this topic was conducted using the PubMed database. All kinds of publications (i.e., reviews, original contributions and case reports) written in English and published in the last 15 years were included. The aim of our literature review is to draw a picture of the current state of the pharmacological treatment of SC impairment in SZ